Issues, Problems, Crisis

I was talking with a friend of mine the other day about how he became the leader that he is today.  During the course of our conversation he shared about three different types of leaders.  The first type of leaders are people who are visionary and look way out into the future.  The second type of leaders are the ones who see with more limited vision and see down the road only far enough to keep them from getting in trouble with their superiors.  The third type of leaders are those who are near-sighted and only have time to react to one situation after another, after another.  He shared with me that the visionary leaders deal mainly with issues.  Because they are looking down the road they see what is coming up and make effective plans that will keep the issues from becoming problems.  The limited vision leaders are still somewhat effective, but they are constantly dealing with problems.  They are finding themselves having to make hurried decisions and creating plans or taking steps that are not completely thought through.  They are skilled at steering away from crisis, but it does begin to wear them down after a while.  The near-sighted leaders work in crisis mode a lot of the time because the problems were not addressed soon enough.  These near-sighted leaders rarely plan and quickly burn out because they live in a reactive panic mode all the time.  My friend shared with me that you only ever want to live in the area of issues so that the problems and the crisis rarely occur.  I, for one, truly desire to be not only that type of leader, but that is how I desire to live my entire life.  So here it is put in very simple terms; look down the road of life and identify as many issues as you can and begin to plan how you will address them.  By doing this you will avoid problems, and surely avert many a crisis.  This is really not only for leaders, it is for anyone who wants to live an exceptional life.